


Pinky Promise

by SneetchesToo



Series: 911 Christmas Week 2020 [3]
Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: 911 christmas week 2020, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:40:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28263294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SneetchesToo/pseuds/SneetchesToo
Summary: Day 3: “Promise me this won’t be our last Christmas together?” + comfortOwen makes Michelle a promise he had better break.
Relationships: Michelle Blake/Owen Strand
Series: 911 Christmas Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2067360
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	Pinky Promise

**Author's Note:**

> *It is what it is.  
> ** As if we didn’t already know that Owen has a hard head and a knack for danger.

Michelle was mad, in fact, mad wasn’t even an accurate way to describe how she was currently feeling.

Infuriated, perturbed, angry.

Those were all more accurate words than mad.

And she only had her stubborn, hard-headed, ridiculously handsome husband to thank for that.

“I can’t believe you.” She threw the door to the room open with a huff, watching as Owen looked up from his phone and frowned.

“Excuse me?” Clearly he didn’t understand why she was upset. “What did I do now?”

“Winding up in the hospital?” It’s not like this was the best time for him to do this. “On Christmas? Really Owen?”

She had been wrapping the last minute presents she had snagged for the girls earlier when she had gotten the call.

TK hadn’t said much, but she had understood ‘hospital’ and ‘you should probably come’.

So she had pleaded with her mom to stay a few more hours and then she had thrown on shoes and a coat and had been out the door without so much as another word.

She hadn’t even kissed her girls goodbye.

She hadn’t even bothered to brush her hair either, a fact that Carlos just had to point out when she had arrived at the hospital.

“I said I was sorry Michelle.” Yeah, he had, in the ten missed calls that ended in voicemails and the dozens of texts that he had sent her. “About thirty times already if I recall.”

She hadn’t had her phone on her and had only checked it to see if he was on his way home when TK had called.

“Sorry isn’t enough!” She had felt guilty for not answering his calls for about ten seconds, but then the fear and the worry and the anger had set in. “You… we…”

“I know this isn’t how you wanted to spend the holiday honey, I’m sorry.” This wasn’t how anyone wanted to spend their holiday, married or not, kids or not, being in the hospital on Christmas really fucking sucked.

“You could’ve died Owen!” She honestly didn’t really know if that was the case because TK and Carlos had assured her that it wasn’t serious and that he was going to be fine.

However, his doctor wanted him to stay overnight for observation.

Something she was very determined to make the man rethink as soon as she finally met him.

“But I didn’t…” Always the optimist this man.

“But you could have?! Don’t you realize that?” Judd had made sure to let her know that it could have very easily ended differently and that if it hadn’t been for Mateo’s quick thinking, they both could’ve been a lot worse off. “You’re not exactly a spring chicken anymore. You can’t keep doing this.”

“Hey now!” He seemed utterly offended by her statement and she just sighed. “I distinctly remember someone once referring to me as an aging sex symbol!”

“Yeah, aging, that’s the part you should have been paying attention to.” But he refused to believe that he was getting older and she knew it.

She knew that having kids had revitalized him some.

And now that they had grandkids as well, a fact that still blew her mind sometimes, he liked to think he was half his age.

“Come on Michelle…” But he wasn’t half his age and he wasn’t in the shape or the condition to be doing this anymore.

Sure he had beaten cancer, twice.

Sure he was still quite active and eating healthy (mostly).

But his body had been through the ringer before he went into remission last year and he really needed to start slowing it down some.

“No I just… you have to make me a promise.” She hated to do this, but she had too.

“What kind of promise?” She wouldn’t raise her girls alone, not after everything they had gone through to adopt Emily.

Not after everything they had gone through to have Scarlett four years ago and then Willa a year later.

He couldn’t leave her behind to raise those girls alone.

“You have to promise that this won’t be our last Christmas together.” She felt her voice crack at her words and she could feel the tears rolling down her cheeks as she tried to hold it together.

“I can’t promise that.” She knew what she was asking of him and so did he.

She had been the willing to step back from her position in order to take care of Emily.

And she had been the one willing to completely leave the field when she had Scarlett.

He had gotten to keep his job and his life and his purpose outside of being a parent.

But now, well now he was risking it all and she couldn’t take it.

“Yes you can!” She hadn’t meant to scream so loudly but judging by the way he jumped a little in the hospital bed she had maybe been a little too loud.

“How? How can I promise that?” He was asking for an answer that she didn’t know how to give him without completely breaking his heart in two.

“You have to promise to stop being so goddamn hard headed!” That wasn’t what she wanted to say but her brain stopped her mouth from saying the words out loud.

You need to quit your fucking field job and you know it.

The words were burning the inside of her throat and she wanted to say them so badly it hurt.

“But then who would I be?” He would still be Owen Strand and that was all that mattered.

“You’d still be wonderful husband. And you’d still be an amazing father.” And a wonderful husband and amazing father he was indeed. “But at least then you’d be alive.”

Having him alive was what mattered now.

They hadn’t almost lost him to cancer, twice, for him to die trying to save someone’s kitten from a tree.

Or from having a roof fall on his head as tonight’s shift would have it.

“Fine Michelle, I promise.” He whispered the words and she felt her heart skip a beat.

He wasn’t just promising to stop being so hard headed and he knew it and she knew it.

He was promising to do something he should have done a long time ago.

“Pinky promise?” She held her pinky out toward him and swallowed back the tears.

“What are we, eight?” His question was dripping with sarcasm but she simply rolled her eyes and sighed.

“Pinky promise or it’s not real.” She had always been real big into pinky promises, something Judd still teased her about to this day.

“Okay, I pinky promise.” He reached his pinky out and locked it with hers, smiling as she wrapped her pinky around his and shook their hands up and down a few times.

“You can’t break that.” Not that she thought he would, not this time.

“I never break a pinky promise, believe me, I know better.” If he had learned anything from being married to her for the last five years it was that you never broke a promise.

And so far, he never had.

**Author's Note:**

> **Comments please.**


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